se literature had to be built up. All the standard works
hitherto had been written in Latin, or in a few cases in French; and now
that English had been recognised, alike at court, in the law-courts, and
in the schools, as the natural language of the inhabitants of England,
the first thing which had to be done was to provide Englishmen with the
ordinary sources of information in their own language. The need for
translation directed attention to its principles and canons, and two
interesting little essays on the subject are here printed--the one from
the preface, said to be by Purvey, to the second Wyclifite Bible, and
the other from that prefixed by Trevisa to his translation of Higden's
_Polychronicon_. I have particular pleasure in placing these two
prefaces side by side, because, as far as I know, the really striking
resemblances between them, in their grammatical remarks, in their survey
of previous attempts at an English translation of the Bible, and in
their attitude to such a translation, have never been pointed out.
Without wishing to intrude myself into controversial matters on which no
one is entitled to speak who has not made a special study of the
subject, I would fain again draw attention to the fact that whereas we
have a definite statement by Caxton[7] that the _Polychronicon_ 'was
englisshed by one Trevisa, vicarye of barkley, which atte request of one
Sir Thomas lord barkley translated the sayd book [which we have], _the
byble_, and bartylmew _de proprietatibus rerum_ [which we have] out of
latyn into englysshe,' in the case of Purvey his name was first
mentioned in connection with Bible translation in 1729 by Daniel
Waterton, who 'guessed' and 'pitched upon' him (Waterton's Works, vol.
x. p. 361) as the author of the second version, partly on the ground of
his general prominence as a Wyclifite, and also because of his ownership
of a Bible in Trinity College, Dublin, which Waterland hoped would prove
to be of that version. As it happens, the text, which is only that of
the New Testament, is, apparently throughout, that of the earlier
version, with some of the Prologues of the later version to separate
books inserted. Inasmuch also as the manuscript was not completed till
1427 or later, its bearing on the question of the authorship of a
translation, which had then been in circulation for some thirty years,
does not appear to be very great. It was open to any one to combine the
different parts of the two ver